Ireland’s largest registered charities, 2020-2023 - what do the numbers tell us?

A couple of years ago, I published an analysis of Ireland's largest registered charities (income > €1m) using 2020 data from the Benefacts legacy database. At the time, the large charities matching these criteria and listed on Benefacts accounted for almost 3.2 billion in income – about 1.5% of Ireland’s economy in 2020. Sadly the Benefacts project has now closed.  But using Charity Regulator data aligned with the original Benefacts sub-sectors, I have been looking at how these charities fared over the following 3 years. Pressures and structural change at home and abroad are reflected clearly in the results – but there are also some unexpected findings.

(Section 38 funded organisations, acute voluntary hospitals and third level institutions (but not their fundraising foundations) are excluded throughout, following the same methodology as the original post. The sub-sector breakdown follows a classification standard devised by Benefacts, drawing on the Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project's internationally recognised framework for nonprofit classification. Large charities listed in Benefacts are a subset of those known to the Charities Regulator, since Benefacts only listed organisations that were organised or structured to some extent, and for whom it could derive data from public sources. Of the approximately 750 charities meeting these criteria listed by the Charities Regulator, Benefacts had collected data on just over 600. It has been possible to follow up on 550 of these based on 2023 Regulator filings). 

Needs as a driver of growth – housing, and the startling growth of UNICEF Ireland

Between 2020 and 2023, almost every sub-sector of Ireland's largest registered charities grew. Two sub-sectors stand out at the top of the chart: Local Development/Housing at +49% and Advocacy/Law/Politics at +52%. Given the backdrop, the growth in housing is unsurprising — Ireland's housing and homelessness crisis deepened significantly over this period, and approved housing bodies took on an increasingly central role in social housing delivery. Although 90% of the organisations in this group increased their income over the period, over half of the income growth across the entire sub-sector was actually accounted for by just two organisations: Tuath Housing and Clúid Housing, both of which roughly doubled their income between 2020 and 2023.

Income growth in the Advocacy/Law/Politics sub-sector is similarly concentrated — this time in a single organisation. UNICEF Ireland is classified by Benefacts as Advocacy because its role is to raise funds and influence policy in Ireland rather than deliver international programmes directly. Its income grew by 334% between 2020 and 2023, likely reflecting a surge in emergency appeals responding to the Turkey-Syria earthquakes, Gaza, Sudan, and Ukraine. Three quarters of the organisations in this sub-sector grew their income, but UNICEF Ireland's increase alone accounts for 64% of the advocacy sector’s income growth. Strip it out, and its increase looks considerably more modest. UNICEF’s income growth also outpaced that of every charity listed in the International sub-sector.

Philanthropy - a sector waiting to be activated?

Apart from the religion sub-sector – whose small number of diverse organisations makes any overall trend hard to discern – Philanthropy/voluntarism shows the lowest growth over the period. This sub-sector is made up largely of grant-making foundations, philanthropic intermediary organisations, and the fundraising arms of third level institutions and hospitals. Overall income grew by just 5%, with only about half of constituent organisations increasing their income. The three groups within the sub-sector seem to tell distinct stories: university foundations collectively saw income fall; hospital and hospice foundations were divided between those that grew and those that didn't; and the core philanthropic intermediaries grew by a modest 11%. The comparison period 2020–2023 captures almost exactly the build up to Ireland's first National Philanthropy Policy, which was launched in December 2023. A message at this policy’s launch was that the philanthropic sector's income does not yet reflect Ireland's wealth levels. Now that the policy infrastructure is in place – will this translate into growth?

High growth registered charities

As the housing and philanthropy data both illustrate, aggregate growth rates can be driven by a handful of organisations, shaped by lumpy funding cycles, or pulled in opposite directions by groups with very different business models sitting under the same label. The next chart moves below the sub-sector level to look at the individual organisations whose income grew most dramatically between 2020 and 2023. It includes some stand-out performers from otherwise low-growth sectors (Changex International, sitting within the largely flat-lining Philanthropy/voluntarism sub-sector, tops the list) - a reminder that, even within a sector, the income trajectories of individual charities can vary widely. It is worth keeping this in mind when interpreting the sectoral data.

What does this all tell us?

Taken together, this data reflects a group of large charities whose individual income – in about 80% of cases – grew between 2020 and 2023, while their combined income increased by 27% from €3.2 billion to €4 billion. This growth is hardly surprising in this post-Covid recovery period. Analysed by sub-sector, the data also tells a story of organisations whose ability to secure income is highly responsive to domestic and international developments - while the diverging fortunes of individual charities within those sub-sectors suggest that organisational factors also play a significant role. For charities that sometimes feel at the mercy of forces beyond their control, the experience of those that bucked their sub-sector's trend may offer some useful lessons.

Finally, while the closure of Benefacts has left a real hole in our data, Charities Regulator information has been helpful in reconstructing this analysis. Understanding how Ireland's charity sector is changing - and whether it is being adequately resourced to meet demand - depends on having that kind of infrastructure in place.

See what's behind this data

You can use the table below to see which of the charities in this analysis are assigned to which sectors in the legacy Benefacts scheme. Use the dropdown at the top to select by sector.